<h2>Welcome</h2>

<p>This is the main repository for enterprise geospatial REST web services. 
If you are looking for geospatial web services, you've found the right place.</p>
 
<p>If you are new to REST web services, check out the Instructions, Tips and Tricks section.
It contains some handy functions for connecting to and processing our REST
web services from languages like Javascript, PHP, and .NET, along with tips
on returning custom spatial fields.</p>

<p>Why REST? REST offers two big advantages over SOAP based web services: </p>
	<ul>
		<li>Speed. SOAP is a heavy protocol, making it slow and cumbersome.
			All things being equal, REST web services are considerably faster.</li>
		<li>Simplicity. SOAP web services generally require toolkits for client
			consumption. REST services, on the other hand, are extremely simple, 
			making it easy to consume REST web services from scripting languages 
			like Python, Ruby, PHP, and Javascript.
		</li>
	</ul>


<p>These services are created, maintained, and supported by Geospatial Information Services 
as a part of our Service Oriented Architecture development philosophy. The services 
described herein are driven by free and open source software.</p>

<p>If you have any questions, please contact <a href="mailto:tobin.bradley@gmail.com">Tobin Bradley</a>.
If you find the documentation here insufficiently boring, please check out our blog, 
<a href="http://maps.co.mecklenburg.nc.us/ft/" target="_blank">Fuzzy Tolerance</a>.</p> 
